Minnesota Ranks Near Bottom on Election Integrity Scorecard
Minnesota ranks in the bottom ten states when it comes to election integrity according to a national think tank. It comes as no surprise to those of us who’ve been watching these things for years, but there’s great value in the Heritage Foundation shining a spotlight on the problem with a newly released state-by-state Election Integrity Scorecard.
Dropping 8 places from Heritage Foundation’s last ranking, Minnesota tied this year with New York and New Jersey for 42nd place out of the 50 states. California and Nevada claimed the absolute worst rankings at the bottom of the list, while Tennessee, Georgia, Oklahoma, Florida and South Carolina got the best marks and claimed the top 5.
Previous reports from Heritage ranked Minnesota low, but it didn’t fall into the bottom 10 until the recent enactment of automatic voter registration and automatic mailing of absentee ballots to lifetime subscribers – both of which create big new security holes in the system.
As someone who has studied Minnesota’s election system extensively for 15 years, I’d be inclined to suggest that Minnesota should have been ranked lower all along, but I’m glad this is getting the national attention the problem deserves.
Remember, back in 2010, when Election Integrity Watch was first established, we were running billboards to draw attention to problems in Minnesota’s election system, proclaiming our dubious distinction of being the #1 state for voter fraud convictions – We’d seen more convictions from a single election than any other state had in the last 75 years – not because the government caught it, but because we did – as a citizens’ movement that did the research and pressured our officials to do something about it. That was almost fourteen years ago and unfortunately, despite our best efforts and the hard work of so many others, we’ve continued to lose ground.
Check out Heritage.org to see the full scorecard and details of the criteria used to score each state. It’s very well put together and quite informative.
Election integrity will be among the defining battles of our era. If we lose this one, all will be lost – for generations to come.
So, let’s be sure to get it right.
